Louie Gohmert is a reactionary neanderthal from northeast Texas, in a district with no cities-- Tyler has around 97,000 people and Longview has 80,000 and Nagodoches 33,000-- bordering on Louisiana and a lot closer to Arkansas than to Houston. Last year the PVI was R+24, the 17th reddest congressional district in America. This year the PVI is even worse-- R+25. Louie Gohmert was elected in 2004 when a legally dubious mid-decade gerrymander by Tom Delay shoved Republican-leaning Smith and Gregg counties into the district, allowing Gohmert to beat Democratic incumbent Max Sandlin. In 2012 Obama didn't even get 30% of the vote and last year Hillary fared even worse, Trump beating her 72.2% to 25.3%. Gohmert's lowest ever reelection number was 68%.As far as I know, Gohmert, a rabid anti-healthcare extremist, didn't attack Ted Cruz wen Cruz announced he would vote against the latest version of TrumpCare. Instead, Gohmert went on Fox & Friends Monday and called for Arizona to recall John McCain, couching his sick idea in humanitarian guise. McCain had just reported that his doctors had given him "a very poor prognosis" of recovering from glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer, the same type of cancer that Ted Kennedy in 2009. On 60 Minutes Sunday night McCain said that he thinks about Kennedy a lot and said that Kennedy continued to work despite the diagnosis and "never gave up because he loved the engagement." Gohmert wants to take that engagement in his last months away from him, even though it would have no impact on actually being able to pass TrumpCare. Gohmert's a monster. "He’s got cancer, it’s a tough battle," he said piously on Fox & Friends yesterday. "But stress is a real inhibitor to getting over cancer." Yeah, what about the stress of a recall election?
“I think Arizona could help him, and us. Recall him, let him fight successfully this terrible cancer, and let’s get someone in here who will keep the word he gave last year,” Gohmert said....“If he had said last year what he was going to do, Kelli Ward would have beat him,” Gohmert said, referring to the former Arizona state senator who ran against McCain in the primary, losing by 11 points. Ward is challenging Arizona’s other GOP senator, Jeff Flake, next year.Gohmert is not the first Republican lawmaker to connect McCain’s medical status to his opposition to his party’s efforts to repeal and replace the health care law.In August, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson suggested McCain’s cancer could have affected his decision to cast the decisive “no” vote the previous month.“Again, I’m not going to speak for John McCain-- he has a brain tumor right now-- that vote occurred at 1:30 in the morning, some of that might have factored in,” Johnson told a Chicago talk radio show on Aug. 8.The Wisconsin Republican later walked back his remarks, but not before he was criticized by McCain spokeswoman Julie Tarallo.“It is bizarre and deeply unfortunate that Senator Johnson would question the judgment of a colleague and friend,” she said in a statement. “Senator McCain has been very open and clear about the reasons for his vote.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Empathy-- a sobriquet sometimes used to describe Señor Trumpanzee-- was on the Rick & Bubba radio show in Alabama Monday morning attacking McCain and calling his decision to back Arizonans rather than the party line on healthcare "a tremendous slap in the face to the Republican Party." And all for naught, since McConnell couldn't muster the voters to pass the thing and after a Republican lunch today, called off the vote, effectively killing any chance of the Republicans repealing Obamacare this year.